Sports & racism: Ugly, frightening trend

Baltimore Orioles' Adam Jones, right, is congratulated after hitting a three-run home run off San Francisco Giants' Barry Zito in the ninth inning of a baseball game on Sunday, Aug. 11, 2013, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
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Baltimore Orioles' Adam Jones, right, is congratulated after hitting a three-run home run off San Francisco Giants' Barry Zito in the ninth inning of a baseball game on Sunday, Aug. 11, 2013, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
/ AP

Adam Jones felt right at home last week when he racked up four hits at Petco Park to lead the Orioles to a 4-1 win over the Padres. Four days later, however, the National City native felt about as foreign as can be when a Giants fan threw a banana his way in the midst of a Baltimore blowout.

As far as bigotry goes, hurling that particular fruit in a black man's direction is generally about as ambiguous as a right cross, yet in this case, the fan apologized and said the food-flinging was not racially-motivated but rather an act of frustration.

Why he would choose a banana, or how he felt chucking a piece of produce would accomplish anything are both legitimate questions. What's more pertinent is this one: Do you believe him?

It sure would be nice to. In a world ruled by Emperor PC, where some people seem to enjoy being offended, it would be a relief to know that this was nothing more than a case of angry littering. Unfortunately, thanks to two recent sports-related incidents that are far less open to interpretation, the Jones matter may have been the final installment of a rather disheartening trilogy.

It was just a week ago, remember, that a vandal scrawled "Heil Hitler," swastikas and a slew of racial epithets on a Jackie Robinson statue in Brooklyn. And it was just a week before that when video caught Eagles wide receiver Riley Cooper spewing the "N" word at a Kenny Chesney concert.

You'd be hard-pressed to find the last time three such high-profile displays of discrimination sullied the sports world in a 12-day span, but if you did, this much is guaranteed -- it wouldn't have happened in a year starting with a 2.

Perhaps that's the most distressing part about all this; that this eruption came from a dormant volcano. Then again, as Chargers linebacker Dwight Freeney pointed out Monday, maybe prejudice hasn't disappeared so much as it has learned to don camouflage.

"I think it's still there. I think people would be lying to you if they said, as opposed to 60 or 70 years ago when it was really a focal point, that it's over and done with. We just don't talk about it as much," said Freeney from Chargers Park. "It's more undercover...you figure we're so far ahead and then it rears its ugly head and lets you know it's still here."

Anonymous comments on Yahoo! or YouTube are enough to confirm that intolerance still walks among us, even if the venom reflects a minuscule portion of the population. But does it not intensify the sting when it spills over to sports? Sports are Jackie Robinson, "Remember the Titans" and "Brian's Song." Sports are where color lines get deleted from the hard drive.

The only black and white involving athletes is "winning = good, losing = bad," right? Or is that notion as naive as it is incorrect?

In Europe, for instance, black soccer players have been subjected to abuse on a level that Americans would find inconceivable. In the middle part of last decade, fans made a sign directed at Ivory Coast native Marco Zoro that read "peanuts and bananas are the pay for your infamy," chanted "monkey" every time Cameroonian striker Samuel Eto'o touched the ball, and spit on black Frenchman Thierry Henry during throw-ins.